How Social Media Could Benefit Businesses

In today’s world social media is a very popular platform. It is a way for us to share our personal life and reconnect with our friends from the past. Raking in over millions of users social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter allows us to interact, and share with one another from far distances; so long as we have a simple Internet connection.

Seeing that these platforms have become a popular trend, it’s no surprise that businesses should take a look into what makes these platforms special. What makes these platforms special to a business is the ability to interact with customers, being able to keep information up to date, and showing a more personal aspect from the company.

Interacting with customers

One of the major roles of a business is being able to interact with its customer. The customer is one of the many important things that keep a business running. With good customer support, or customer interest this allows for the company to be relatable, likeable, and makes people want to come back for more.

Although it may not seem like it, social media can help a business interact with a customer so long as the opinions are heard. Sounds confusing at first, but let’s put it in a better example. Say you have a customer that is having a problem with your product.

This customer decides that it would be a good idea to post it up on that company’s Facebook page to see if he or she is the only one who is having the same problem. To that persons surprise he or she isn’t the only one having this problem. As a company, if you are paying attention to your customers, then by popular demand you will see there is a reoccurring problem with your service or product. This should show you’re listening by fixing the problem and addressing that their complaints/concerns have been heard and you as a company are correcting it as best, and as fast as you can.

Examples

How can good customer support benefit you, even from something as simple as interaction you ask?

Well, let’s use two big retail corporations as an example on how this can benefit your business.  When Wal-Mart was still competing to be the top tier retail department in the US, one of its competitors was Kmart. At one point Wal-Mart and Kmart were still fighting to be the best.

Kmart had great deals, cheap items, and a fast pace checkout line. Wal-Mart, although lacking on deals at the time had a lot of items to sell, great checkout lines, and even a variety of products. But what set Wal-Mart apart from Kmart, and even made it the best store at the time was customer support. Good customer support can literally make or break your company. You see, Kmart lacked on the “good” customer support and that is why customers just started going to Wal-Mart, it’s because they always welcomed their customers and tried to make everything a pleasant experience.  Just keep that in mind when trying to be a better business.

Event Marketing

If you’re a service, or a nonprofit organization, or even some kind of charity you will most likely have some sort of event happening in the neighborhood or in a different state. In this example we’ll say you’re having the annual BBQ party for a fundraiser for the local high school to have a new computer class. You and your team had everything planned out and ready, but some last minute details were made.

It would be a hassle to have to call all the people who signed up to help out, and not everyone who sees that post it on the wall will know what’s going on. Small things can be overlooked sometimes. Even with social media there is no guarantee that you will have everyone aware of the changes. But let’s say a friend of a friend can inform their friends because of that said Facebook post, it would be a lot easier than waiting days for someone to get back to the location to read a flyer.

Sites like Facebook or Twitter can make making last minute changes a lot easier for both you and the people who follow you. But this can also work on things that are not events as well. Making some major change to a policy but don’t want to have people reread the same license agreement all over again? No problem, show just the policy and explain why it’s happening.

Do you want to show pictures of your latest prototype of that project you’re working on? No problem and you can have commentary too. Social media allows us to alert the people fast and easy on any upcoming events or changes, or even updates. You could send an e-mail, but if it’s a large group it would be a lot easier to alert everyone on the fly.

A great example of this would be Greenville Technical College. GTC is my local technical college, and it has a Facebook page as well as a YouTube page. GTC uses Facebook to show photos of that group meeting the day before, or even competitions it has hosted. But one of the more helpful things it shares is whether or not the school is closed due to inclement weather. Not everyone has the time to check the radio or news.

But people do have time to open their Facebook app on their phone and see if everything is open or not. GTC is trying to keep up to date with most modern technologies and trends, and has defiantly found a way to use Facebook to their advantage.

Looking at it now, there are a lot of things that businesses can benefit from by using social media to their advantage. Not only could it assist them in doing things more quickly and effectively but it can also benefit their customers or their community around them.

Being able to keep everything up to date or even get a sense of someone listening is a good start to show that you have the personality in mind as well as the business as well. So if you’re a small company looking for ways to build a community and show you are willing to work hard at it, don’t be afraid to start a small or large community over Facebook or Twitter.

Running ads on social media is another good idea to find new customers on a budget. You can create awesome Facebook ads using tools and define your audience based on a variety of criteria (or even reach out to your past visitors or customers). You can match ads to your chosen audience for best results

Also, always remember that good customer service is good business.

I hope you found this useful, and thank you for watching/reading.